


Expecting to Fly

by MarkoftheAsphodel



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: Dysfunctional Relationships, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 08:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4953973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkoftheAsphodel/pseuds/MarkoftheAsphodel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bereft of her brothers, her heart and mind divided, Queen Altena of the new kingdom of Thracia tries to lead her nation to the future her father dreamed of.  Which father?  Well, isn't that the conundrum before her?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_Prologue_

Altena turned away from the new emperor with a sting of regret in her heart. For Lord Seliph to have brought up Arion in so playful a fashion...

_Wouldn’t it be great if he could lend his strength to your cause?_

She’d stammered, had shaken her head and said things she didn’t quite intend.

_Someday, the time will come._

The time for what, Altena didn’t entirely know. She tried to put it out of her mind, and stood immobile by the side of her mount as Lord Seliph gave his farewell blessing to the rest of her party. But the emperor’s adviser, the man who’d been the King of Silesse back when Altena was growing up as the Princess of Thracia, came up beside her. Altena felt her shoulders stiffen involuntarily; she knew Lord Lewyn had guided them well, but there was something about the man that bothered her. At least, Lord Lewyn’s presence bothered her dragon, and that in turn was sufficient to worry Altena.

“Yes, my lord?” Tactician, former king, whatever he was.

“I must tell you this before you leave,” said Lord Lewyn. He looked at her from the corners of his chilly green eyes. “Travant was not acting entirely of his own accord when he caused the death of your parents. Travant’s hand brought them down, but the will behind it belonged to Manfroy and his servants.”

From another, Altena might have expected this to be some lie meant to comfort her. She’d seen enough of the Silessian to know he didn’t act that way, and she did not know what to make of it.

“My lord, what does this news mean now, with Fa-- with Travant dead at the hands of my brother?” And my brother dead in turn, she added silently. And my true parents dead no matter who killed them.

“You need not feel shame over your memories, Altena,” said Lord Lewyn, and it seemed she could feel the cold light of his eyes probing at her soul. “You are the daughter of Quan and Ethlyn... and of Travant. That is why Thracia now rests in your hands.”

Altena shivered as Lord Lewyn returned to stand by Lord Seliph. She didn’t have the will just then to consider the implications of all that he said just then; he seemed to be giving her permission not to despise herself for thinking fondly of the man she’d called her father for her entire waking existence. Between them, Lord Seliph and his tactician had managed to pull Altena’s heart into every direction all at the same time, and Altena was grinding her teeth by the time Lord Lewyn gave her party his own final blessing.

“Create a peaceful place, all of you,” he said. And then they were free to leave, to go pursue the “heavy task” of uniting Thracia that had been set before them. Altena looked at those who were there to support her in this task-- General Hannibal, of course, and his son Cairpre. The girl with the golden braid who’d been following Cairpre around was coming with them, too. She had a bright-sounding name that Altena didn’t recall just then.

 _I’d better learn it, hadn’t I? I’ve a lot to learn. Too much. I never expected to be the one to deal with any of this_.

“Your Highness, we’d best be off. Our work here is finished, yet the work ahead of us...”

Altena stared at her knight as his low, even voice trailed off into silence. “Yes. Let’s be off, Finn. Let’s go home.”

Altena was glad to leave her party behind at her dragon spread its wings and lifted her into the sky. She didn’t want to hear the chatter of Cairpre and his friend, didn’t want to see the sympathy in Hannibal’s eyes or feel the melancholy that hung around Finn like a trailing cloud. Above all, she didn’t want to hear or say anything more about her brother. Either one of them-- the brother that fell to earth, or the one that took to the skies without a backward glance. Both of them had left her behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This particular version of Cairpre is Alec's son, so no Valkyrie staff for Leif.


	2. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Queen Altena greets the new ambassador from the Imperial Court and thinks a great deal on appearances.

The court of Leonster did not approve of her lip rouge. Altena hesitated at the mirror with the gilded tube in her hand as she considered wearing a more subtle shade of rose to make those around her happy. But the bold color she’d brought from Thracia suited her complexion, even if it looked like “a smear of savage blood” to some of her courtiers. But she’d compromised enough, hadn’t she, by allowing her hair to be tamed, swept up in a mound and secured in a tiara that had once been her mother’s? Altena had the captain of her Royal Guard to thank for that; Selphina had carefully preserved the tiara along with other relics of Ethlyn, including a little pot inlaid with pearl that still had traces of delicate pink rouge inside.

New Thracia’s queen applied her carmine lip rouge with a steady hand. There was only so much of herself she could efface in a single moment. Besides, the banquet in honor of new ambassador from the Imperial Court would be tomorrow, so she wouldn’t have to worry about color getting on her teeth or any other kind of embarrassment. This was merely the reception to greet the ambassador, so what harm would a little splash of color do?

So the Queen of New Thracia stepped through the entrance of her throne room with the hue of fresh blood on her lips and with her head so heavy that it ached long before she made her appearance. She kept her gaze fixed ahead and hoped her face showed no trace of the discomfort as Finn escorted her to the dais. The people of Leonster wanted to see her looking sweet, not severe. They’d been looking forward to having Nanna as their Queen. Altena didn’t know that her features were even made to be sweet, but she tried, keeping her eyes wide and deliberately curving her lips a little, hoping she evoked some echo of her mother.

“Thank you,” she whispered to Finn once she’d settled into the New Thracian throne. She shouldn’t have said anything, but something in Finn’s expression went past the solemnity due the occasion to mirror the exact way that she actually felt, and she wanted to give him some kind of reassurance, some kind of… something. He knew all too well she wasn’t Nanna, wasn’t Ethlyn… wasn’t Leif.

It was easier on the days General Hannibal attended her. The Great General and the Commander of Her Majesty’s Armies managed to coexist in their ill-defined roles, taking turns at formal events, but Hannibal seemed genuinely happy, even relieved, to be serving Her Majesty the Queen. In Hannibal’s calm presence, Altena could feel for a few hours that she belonged on this gilded throne adorned with the full arms of Thracia, north and south integrated as one. Since Finn stood at her side today, Altena fixated on the details of the throne room— the gilded lances crossed above each window, the motif evoking dragon wings worked into the new carpet.

The mounting pain in her head turned the reception into a blur. Granville’s ambassador proved a young nobleman of the noble House of Jungby, the former Duke Scorpio. Altena had been warned that Scorpio was coming her way, as Emperor Seliph hoped to rehabilitate the disgraced member of Empress Lana’s family, but Altena barely remembered Scorpio from the war and greeted him with the dignity due any of Emperor Seliph’s emissaries. She didn’t care that his father Duke Andrei had committed some atrocity or other twenty years before. 

Scorpio had long fair hair and an inscrutable face, narrow across the cheekbones. He presented her with a jeweled brooch, a relic of House Chalphy that had been worn by Altena’s grandmother and came with the emperor’s blessing for his dearly beloved cousin. Altena promised to wear it as a mark of her lasting affection for the emperor and then gave it to Finn to hold, because the neckline of the gown she wore at present didn’t have any place for a brooch.

Then it was blessedly over, and Altena could not have been more grateful in that moment that the banquet and ball would come tomorrow. She let herself be escorted out by her Commander of Armies and hoped the pain pulsing behind her eyes wouldn’t cause her to stumble or otherwise humiliate herself.

“Thank you, Finn,” she said again as he left her at the door of her private apartments. If Altena hadn’t felt so wretched, she might have invited him to stay so that she might ask him what he thought of the ambassador, but as it was her commander bowed and withdrew, and she was as alone with her own thoughts as the Queen of New Thracia ever got to be alone. Altena didn’t wait for anyone to help her take the pins out of her hair. She pulled them out herself, set aside the tiara and lay on the couch of the Queen’s Sitting Room with her hair streaming every which way.

Two brief hours of being seen and exchanging a few words was more difficult than a full day’s battle. Altena wondered, not for the first time, how she could possibly thrive in this role, bearing everyone’s expectations as both a beloved queen and blessed _sovereign_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Scorpio lived. :p
> 
> Plz check out this piece of artwork by one of my favorite FE4 artists on pixiv. It planted the seed for this entire story: http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=3152247


	3. Beyond Redemption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Queen Altena goes on progress across her kingdom and comes to a greater understand of Leif... and in doing so, trips over a new mystery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for Thracia 776 that retroactively change one's understanding of FE4.

Everything about Northern Thracia lived up to the myth. The summer proved mild, with the perfect balance of rain and sunshine to make the crops flourish. No drought, no straight-line winds felling trees in a swath of devastation, no hailstorms. The Queen’s advisors predicted a bountiful harvest and Altena imagined wagon-trains of food streaming from her northern counties to her southern ones to finally relieve the suffering of her people beneath the old line of division.

The sweet cherries came into season and the first fruits came to Altena in a little bowl of Manster porcelain made just for the occasion, presented at tea-time with great ceremony. Altena stared at them for a long moment before reaching for one, as they seemed too pretty to eat— half deep-red verging on black, half palest yellow touched with a rosy blush.  

“Are these all for me?” she whispered to Cairpre, who’d taken up a post as Queen’s Secretary in spite of his youth.

“Yes, Your Majesty. It would be impolitic to share the first fruits of your harvest.”

To Altena, raised in a court where King Travant made sure to reward his courtiers with the scraps of his own table, the idea of the sovereign gorging herself on cherries in full view of everyone seemed more than a little absurd, but if this were the custom…

“Though if Your Majesty is not inclined to finish them, the remainder will not be wasted once removed from your sight,” Cairpre added with a gleam in his brown eyes.

Altena had to repress a smile— so everyone did compete for scraps, in the end, behind closed doors in this land of plenty. She left some cherries in the bowl, half of each color… which wasn’t easy, as they were truly delicious. Yet at the same time, something in the lush taste and the experience of trying to deal with the pits and maintain dignity dredged up a memory, and once the afternoon council was over Altena decided to pursue it.

“Finn, do you remember the incident with the cherry pits and Grandmother’s vase?”

This time, the look of unease that passed across her commander’s face was plainly born of embarrassment. Altena thought she even saw a faint blush rising before Finn spoke.

“Aye, Your Majesty. That was the day your lady grandmother chided me for acting as more of a playmate to you than a guardian.”

He didn’t want to talk about it, she knew, but she drew the escapade out of him anyway. Altena was chasing down her memories like so many butterflies to be caught and identified and pinned down forever, and her commander was her main assistant in the chase. The things she could not remember proved legion— the faces and voices of her grandmother and grandfather seemed lost forever— but Altena had reconstructed her life as First Princess of Leonster in disconnected scraps. Here, a bright memory of a garden and a handful of flowers, blue and scarlet and deep purple. There, an attempt to slide down a staircase on a tea-tray. And now, a silly little game in which a small child was pleased to have “won” a game of cherrystones against a youth who had let her win when he ought to have not allowed her to play.

Finn hastily changed the subject once Altena was content that this memory had been catalogued and affixed.

“I wish for you to visit one of the towns that His Late Highness Prince Leif called home, Your Majesty.”

“Not Tahra?”

She didn’t want to go to Tahra… or maybe she did. Her thoughts already were with Arion, for rumors placed him in the autonomous city where his former fiancee Linoan lived. Altena had forgotten about Linoan until those rumors surfaced, as her brother’s engagement seemed to belong to some other world that had bent and twisted and finally shattered along with the Empire itself.

“No, Your Majesty. I would like you to see a more humble place, but one equally dear to your late brother… if not more so.”

He told her then of a small village named Fiana, not far from Thracia’s eastern shores, where Leif had spent the three happiest years of his short life, guarded by the village’s honorable warlord.

“The Lady Eyvel protected your brother as fiercely as she did her own child.”

“Yes, I’d like to pay a visit to someone who did so much for my brother.”

Mostly she was relieved not to be going to Tahra. Or sorry, perhaps. It was so hard to tell.

-x-

The court wanted to make a genuine royal progress out of the jaunt, but in the end only a small party went to Fiana— the queen, her commander of armies, and a handful of soldiers as escort, with Hannibal and Cairpre effectively left in charge of affairs of state while the queen traveled. Finn asked that Lady Patty accompany them, for reasons he didn’t explain. Patty was handy with a sword, and besides that she was wary at court now with her cousin the Imperial Ambassador ever-present, so it made enough sense to Altena that she agreed.

Altena rode a horse for the journey. She consented to this only because it was true that the people of Northern Thracia wished to see her, not as a distant shape in front of the clouds but close enough that they could see Prince Quan and Princess Ethlyn in her. By that measure, the journey south and east was a complete triumph. Altena’s people cheered her, sang and danced for her, showered her with presents— garlands of flowers, embroidered hangings, countless more baskets and bowls of sweet cherries. Altena smiled through the aches brought about by riding an unfamiliar beast because this idea of an informal progress now seemed quite brilliant.

“Smile, Finn. They’re cheering for you also.”

“I do wish they wouldn’t,” he replied, but on her order he at least did acknowledge the public affection by waving to the villagers who shouted out their thanks that he’d protected Prince Leif as a beacon of their hopes for so many years… and that he'd redeemed Leonster’s true princess, their new queen.

Redeemed Altena, in the sense that he’d turned her life every which way before she came to rest on New Thracia’s throne. There were a few compliments offered up by her subjects that Altena would rather not have heard.

And then they reached Fiana, where a tall, spare woman in her middle years welcomed the queen and her party and took Altena on a tour of the little walled town. Altena saw the dusty streets where Leif had played like any village boy, the bed where he’d slept under Eyvel’s maternal protection. She held relics of her brother— an outgrown pair of shoes, a practice sword, a ball and a fishing rod, all kept like treasures in his preserved bedroom.

In this unsung place, Leif wasn’t only the hero who liberated his kingdom yet never got to rule it; he was another boy who’d run off to war and never come home. The overwhelming pathos brought Altena to tears, and rather than comfort Lady Eyvel on the loss of the foster son she’d loved, Altena found herself being comforted.

Dining around Eyvel’s table, eating the rustic foods not dissimilar to what Altena herself had been raised on, the queen felt she’d found some unexpected catharsis. Here was someone who could humanize Leif to her in a way the court of Leonster couldn’t, as everyone there save Finn had missed those years of Leif’s transition from child to young man and Finn could not yet bring himself to speak of Leif so freely, so warmly, without the burden of shame.

And yet, even as Altena took in Eyvel’s stories with a mix of grief and pleasure, she noticed something amiss. She expected Finn to have trouble confronting these vivid memories of Leif, but she hadn’t expected anything odd of Lady Patty. Patty, it seemed to Altena, kept staring at Eyvel in unsubtle and somewhat unnerving ways, moving her lips every now and again with unspoken questions.

Patty went so far as to disappear after the queen’s party settled into a vacant home that the people of Fiana had refurbished into a comfortable cottage during the course of the afternoon.

“Finn, what is going on here?” Altena demanded once she realized Patty had slipped off.

“Your Majesty, it was a mistake to have Lady Patty involved in this journey. I regret it and accept responsibility for the pain it’s caused her.”

“Not so fast.” Altena knew by now it was entirely too easy for her commander to proclaim himself at fault and far too difficult to get an explanation out of him. “What sort of mistake are we talking about? None of this makes any sense to me.”

“I believed there to be a family connection between Lady Eyvel, who as you might have guessed is no native of Thracia, and the House of Jungby. It appears I was mistaken and I have only managed to upset Lady Patty. I’m sorry, Your Majesty.”

True enough that Eyvel’s blonde hair and odd accent didn’t belong to any corner of Thracia, but the second half of the statement confounded Altena.

“But why would Patty be upset if there’s no…”

And she remembered, then, that Patty and her brother Duke Faval were left in an orphanage by their mother Lady Bridget, whom Faval remembered as vaguely as Altena did her own parents. That Bridget, often referenced as among the dead of Behalla, had in fact survived and made her way as far as Connaught before disappearing from history.

“That’s her mother.” Altena, her hand over her mouth, took a full step backward from Finn as the realization left her aghast. “Don’t lie to me, Finn. That’s her own mother and she knows it now and Eyvel doesn’t.”

“I’d hoped to piece something back together without breaking it this time,” he said, and Altena saw the welling tears before he turned away, one hand pressed to the whitewashed wall and the other balled in a fist at his side. “ _Please_ , Your Majesty.”

The words were muffled by the sleeve of his coat. Altena’s head was spinning now with unanswerable questions, a hundred hows and whys, but instead of dismissing her commander so he could flagellate himself in private, Altena put a hand on his shoulder as Finn struggled to piece his own facade back together.

“This just doesn’t end, does it?”

She thought she made out the words “beyond redemption,” still blurred by emotion and the coat sleeve, and Altena wondered if Finn meant Lady Eyvel, himself, or all of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many loose ends in Altena's Thracia... Arion, Linoan, and Eyvel. Don't expect many tidy resolutions; as the next chapter will show, peace is rather a mess.

**Author's Note:**

> This particular version of Cairpre is Alec's son, so no Valkyrie staff for Leif.


End file.
